Susan Boyle would be amazing to work with, say opera stars Il Divo

graysea

It is April 1st in Scotland now, so Happy Birthday

weet, wonderful Susan Boyle!
I can't resist putting this picture on for her birthday. I hope I don't get into trouble.
I would get permission, but I don't know who took it. Susan looks so happy here
I just have to post this.

graysea

Susan Boyle the Musical opens in Newcastle to good reviews

“Great show”, “amazing”, “inspiring”; who is saying this? Fans who went to see the opening of the ‘Susan Boyle the Musical’ last week in Newcastle. As most of you will know, Susan Boyle shot to fame after appearing on “Britain’s Got Talent” TV show and has since become one of Britain’s best known singers worldwide. One fan who came to see the musical said “Susan is everybody, she’s your sister, she’s your neighbour, she’s the person you sit next to in church and sing with” and that is why she is so loved.

Susan Boyle the Musical

As Susan Boyle shot to fame it became apparent that talent did not depend on stereotypical looks. Talent does matter! The musical which premiered in Newcastle will tour Britain before going to Ireland. Susan Boyle is played by Elaine C Smith from Rab C Nesbit, the well loved Scottish comedy. The musical covers Susan Boyle’s earlier years including the struggles she had growing up and the brief relationship she had before her father put a stop to it. The show then continues to cover her success on and after Britain’s Got Talent and her subsequent breakdown. The fairy tale story has been a big hit with fans and critics. The Telegraph critic Dominic Cavendish gave the show a five-star review “In matching the gutsy good humour of its heroine without stooping to hagiography, this is a delight that deserves to go far, and fast, as she has done.”

Susan and Elaine after the performance

Susan Boyle went to see some of the rehearsals of the musical. She told the Daily Mail ‘When I first saw the rehearsals and watched my own life being portrayed on the stage, I thought: ‘What’s the buzz, man? Wait a minute, what’s going on here?’ In the interview Susan said she was hoping to appear at the end of some of the shows to sing however she was very nervous as she has not appeared on a UK stage sine the BGT road show. Yet her performance in Newcastle was met with cheers from the audience. One member of the audience described her appearance as ‘very emotional’ and continued “She looked great. She’s not pretentious; she’s a true ordinary Scottish lady who’s never forgotten her roots, which is lovely.”

Have you seen or will you be going to the Susan Boyle Musical? if so, let us know what you think of it

http://www.plus-size-tall.com/susan-boyle-the-musical-opens-in-newcastle-to-good-reviews-20482/

graysea

Susan Boyle would be amazing to work with, say opera stars Il Divo

Mar 30 2012 By John Dingwall

il divo Image 1

OPERA stars Il Divo have revealed they would love to record with Susan Boyle.

Both owe their fame to Simon Cowell and are signed to his Syco record label.

The music mogul formed Il Divo in 2004 after he auditioned for a pop opera four piece, while SuBo found fame on 2009’s Britain’s Got Talent, where she was runner-up.

Please click on link for full story.

http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/showbiz/2012/03/30/susan-boyle-would-be-amazing-to-work-with-say-opera-stars-il-divo-86908-23806332/

graysea · Friday 30 March 2012

The Stage

Living the Dream

Published Friday 30 March 2012 at 15:32 by Matthew Hemley

Two years after Elaine C Smith made a throwaway remark about playing Susan Boyle on stage, a musical about the singer’s life has opened with Smith in the lead role. Matthew Hemley discovers how the actress was instrumental in its creation

Susan Boyle and Elaine C SmithPhoto: Charlie Gray

In April of 2009, when Susan Boyle was being introduced to the world through her now famous appearance on Britain’s Got Talent, Elaine C Smith was treading the boards in the West End production of Calendar Girls.

Smith had not been watching the television in her dressing room during the play’s interval, but her co-stars had.

And so it was that, while she waited in the wings for act two to begin, Lynda Bellingham and Patricia Hodge began to excitedly tell her the story of this “amazing wee woman from Glasgow” they had just seen on television.

“You need to watch it,” they told her, as they relayed how Boyle, despite the audience’s prejudice, had wowed everyone with her singing voice.

For the entire story, please click on link:

http://www.thestage.co.uk/features/feature.php/35737/living-the-dream?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheStageFeatures+%28The+Stage+%2F+Features%29

graysea

Standing ovation from ecstatic fans at Susan Boyle musical

28 MARCH 2012

Susan Boyle received a standing ovation as she sang at the finale of the opening night of the musical based on her life.

Fans from across the world travelled to Newcastle's Theatre Royal to see I Dreamed A Dream.

Both sad and funny, it charts the singer's life growing up in a large Catholic family in Blackburn, West Lothian, until she was catapulted to world fame in 2009 after her memorable audition forBritain's Got Talent.

CLICK ON PHOTOS FOR GALLERY

Simon Cowell's protege is played by Scottish actress Elaine C Smith, who co-wrote the show and who has a powerful voice herself.

Speaking to HELLO! ahead of the opening night, the mezzo-soprano told of the series of coincidences that led to Elaine being cast, "One day, someone asked me who I would pick to be me in the story of my life. I'd never met her, but I immediately thought of Elaine. It all happened after that."

Elaine, who like Susan grew up in a close-knit, large Catholic family, recalled that her, "mobile phone started going bonkers."

"Everyone was ringing and texting me to ask my reaction to Susan’s comment. I was flattered, but didn’t dare think it would come to anything."

"Then a friend who’s a producer and who had heard that Susan was a fan of mine, put the musical together and asked me to be the lead. It was a big compliment and I jumped at the chance."

The two woman have a genuine rapport having both started out on the club circuit where each had the same signature tune - I Don't Know How to Love Him."

On Tuesday night, Elaine won a standing ovation – as did the rest of the cast – at the curtain call.

Susan, 50, took to the stage in a shimmering red dress and belted out the title song to an adoring audience.

When an American voice shouted from the stalls "We love you", she replied: "I love you too, see you outside."

After the show adoring fans from as far afield as Canada, Australia and New Zealand gathered at the stage door to see their heroine.

The show will tour for the rest of the year with Susan expected to sing at the curtain call of many of the performances.

In pictures: Susan's meteoric rise to fame

http://www.hellomagazine.com/celebrities/201203287580/susan-boyle-receives-standing-ovation/

graysea

This is one of the best reviews I have read. Be sure to click on link and read it all.

http://www.scotsman.com/news/subo-the-musical-the-new-stage-production-and-susan-boyle-s-rise-to-fame-analysed-1-2203838

SuBo: The Musical - the new stage production and Susan Boyle’s rise to fame analysed

Elaine C Smith who plays the role of Susan Boyle

‘I KNEW there would be snobbery about it,” says Elaine C Smith, of her initial reluctance to become involved in the stage musical of Susan Boyle’s life, and she’s right, on two counts.

Firstly, because the story of Susan Boyle – of the talent show that discovered her, of the people who compete to appear on it, of the millions who watch it, and of the very songs Susan sings – is a story of British popular culture, largely ignored by our cultural and political elites, and often ridiculed when they do notice it.

Secondly, because in a world of theatre where large venues are now often dominated by “tribute musicals” of one kind or another – from the global mega-hit Mamma Mia! to smaller masterpieces like the recent Ian Dury show Reasons To Be Cheerful – there is still widespread snobbery about a genre that is seen as making theatre secondary to other media, either to popular music itself, or to the broadcast and recorded media through which it finds its audience.

Yet a single look at a show like the new Susan Boyle musical I Dreamed A Dream – produced by Qdos pantomimes boss Michael Harrison, written jointly by Smith and Scottish panto genius Alan McHugh, and directed with flair by rising star Ed Curtis – is enough to demonstrate that genre doesn’t necessarily dictate quality. Smith says that she was never interested in a show that would “take the piss” out of Susan Boyle, or present a sugary version of her life; or in one that would just be “sing-a-long-a-Susan” – the music, she felt, would have to express something more than that.

Whatever critics and audiences finally make of I Dreamed A Dream, it’s hard to deny the boldness of the first-person narrative through which it gives Susan Boyle a voice, or its honesty about the tougher aspects of her life; about her dismissal as brain-damaged at birth, the tough economic and social circumstances of her West Lothian home town, the bullying she suffered at school, the limited life imposed on her even by her loving family, and the shocking and brutal coverage – particularly of her physical appearance – she received in the gutter press, following her first

graysea

The Telegraph - ECS is Eerily Accurate as SB

Susan Boyle Musical: I Dreamed a Dream, Theatre Royal, Newcastle, review

Elaine C Smith is eerily accurate as the singer Susan Boyle , writes Dominic Cavendish.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/theatre-reviews/9170944/Susan-Boyle-Musical-I-Dreamed-a-Dream-Theatre-Royal-Newcastle-review.html

The Los Angeles Times:

Susan Boyle musical 'I Dreamed a Dream' debuts in Britain

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2012/03/susan-boyle-musical-i-dreamed-a-dream-debuts-in-britain.html?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter&dlvrit=175674

graysea

http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/311113/Susan-Boyle-s-cameo-role-wows-fans

graysea

Susan Boyle musical opens to critical acclaim

Elaine C. Smith plays Boyle and co-wrote play

Susan Boyle performs during her musical 'I Dreamed A Dream' at the Theatre Royal in Newcastle, England, on Tuesday. (Scott Heppell/ Associated Press)

The story of Scottish singer Susan Boyle was captivating when it was happening in real life. Critics and fans alike are now happily revisiting her meteoric rise to fame in a new play about the Scottish singer’s epic story.

The play, I Dreamed a Dream, captures the story of the woman who went from anonymity to global stardom when, in 2009, she shocked the audience of Britain’s Got Talent with her beautiful voice and frumpy look.

The play opened on Tuesday at the Theatre Royal in Newcastle. It received a five-star review from Dominic Cavendish at the Daily Telegraph, a three-star review from Patrick Marmion of the Daily Mail, and a three-star review from Alfred Hickling in The Guardian. Although somewhat catty, the reviewers ultimately enjoyed themselves.

"Between moments of throat-clearing reverentiality and tear-stained crooning, there is much fun to be had," wrote Marmion.

Elaine C. Smith plays Boyle in I Dreamed a Dream. The real Boyle made an appearance at the end of the show, singing the same song from Les Misérables that catapulted her to where she is now.

“It kept occurring to me when I was at Susan’s 50th birthday, speaking to her and watching everything, that actually what had happened to her was quite magical," Smith said in a video posted on the Telegraph’s website. She co-wrote the production.

"And if we’re going to do a stage show then it should be theatrical, and magically tell the fairy story. But tell the darkness of it as well,” Smith continued.

Although she garnered the most attention from the show, when the public voted she lost to a dance troupe. Later that night she went to the Priory, an upscale health clinic in London, apparently for treatment for stress. CNN host Piers Morgan, who was a judge on the show at the time, told press that she had not been sleeping or eating normally in the week leading up to the finale, according to the New York Times.

"Susan Boyle has not sung live on stage since her participation in the 2009 Britain’s Got Talent tour, prior to which she had cemented her new celebrity status by spending five days in the Priory . So the news that she was to make a guest appearance in a musical about her life was bound to raise an eyebrow,” wrote Hickling.

Fans came from as far afield as Australia to see the opening, reported Reuters

http://www.cbc.ca/news/arts/story/2012/03/28/susan-boyle-play.html

.

graysea

Susan and Andy joined the fans for brunch this morning. Susan was very happy to see the fans and Andy raved about the musical and fans. Of course the fans loved it. The picture below is from fanfromgeorgia.
Pictures below are from wasforgas:

Texas Fans

graysea

The Su-Bo stage show

Boyle-ing over ... Susan's finale

By VICTORIA GARO-FALIDES

Published: 23 minutes ago

SUSAN Boyle must feel like she's Dreaming as she wows crowds performing during the finale of the musical based on her life.

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/showbiz/4225319/Susan-Boyle-receives-standing-ovation-at-opening-night-of-I-Dreamed-A-Dream.html

graysea

Susan Boyle musical a hit with fans and critics

By Cindy Martin

The cast of ''I Dreamed A Dream'' - the story of Scottish singer Susan Boyle, perform during a dress rehearsal at the Theatre Royal in Newcastle, northern England March 27, 2012. REUTERS/Nigel Roddis

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/28/entertainment-us-

susanboyle-musical-idUSBRE82R0KO20120328

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/28/entertainment-us-susanboyle-musical-idUSBRE82R0KO20120328

The cast of ''I Dreamed A Dream'' - the story of Scottish singer Susan Boyle, perform during a dress rehearsal at the Theatre Royal in Newcastle, northern England March 27, 2012.

Credit: Reuters/Nigel Roddis

graysea

Susan Boyle: Why aye Dreamed a Dream

Star story ... Susan Boyle

By PAUL THORNTON

Published: Today at 00:18

SUSAN Boyle's the talk of the Toon as she makes a grand entrance at a Newcastle theatre for the new musical about her incredible rise to fame.

SuBo, 50, performs a part in I Dreamed A Dream, named after the song that fired her to stardom.

And she looked well up for it as she arrived at the city's Theatre Royal for last night's show. Rab C Nesbitt star Elaine C Smith, 53, plays SuBo in the stage spectacular, set to tour the UK.

Let's hope it goes alreet...

On song ... Elaine C Smith as SuBo

http://www.thescottishsun.co.uk/scotsol/homepage/news/article4223711.ece

http://www.thescottishsun.co.uk/scotsol/homepage/news/4223711/Susan-Boyle-Why-aye-Dreamed-a-Dream.html#ixzz1qPguHX7R

graysea

http://news.daylife.com/photo/02Egadn99Z7Dm?__site=daylife
Getty Images

NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE, ENGLAND - MARCH 27:Susan Boyle makes a guest appearance on the Newcastle Theatre Royal stage in the World Premiere of 'I Dreamed A Dream' on March 27, 2012 in Newcastle upon Tyne, England. Starring Elaine Smith, the musical follows Susan Boyle's meteoric rise from humble beginnings to global icon and features some of best known songs from her multi-platinum selling albums.

graysea

http://www.metro.co.uk/music/894462-susan-boyle-receives-standing-ovation-at-opening-night-of-musical-premiere

Susan Boyle receives standing ovation at opening night of musical premiere

I Dreamed A Dream, the musical based on the life of Susan Boyle, received a standing ovation last night after its premiere in Newcastle.

Read more: http://www.metro.co.uk/music/894462-susan-boyle-receives-standing-ovation-at-opening-night-of-musical-premiere#ixzz1qQ1OIpmH

Susan Boyle: Singer and Now Businesswoman

By Marie Sheahan Brown

Who can forget the YouTube masterpiece? She strode and sashayed onto the stage with golden stature and confidence. She sparred wittily with the three famous judges, wearied by their long day of auditions in Glasgow, Scotland. She didn’t look the part of a “professional singer,” although one might perceive that being “currently unemployed” at forty-seven left little extra for beauty-shop pampering. Was she, rather, a comedienne? Susan Boyle audition

Then she sang. The formerly skeptical audience stood enraptured, tears welling as she belted out “I Dreamed A Dream” from Les Misérables with stunning clarity and passion.

More than five years after the seven-minute audition video aired on Britain’s Got Talent on April 11, 2009, and promptly hit worldwide news feeds, multitudes in America and beyond remember Susan Boyle. Since she first broke Amazon pre-sale records in September 2009, millions have bought her albums. Each year, a new carefully crafted album has been released in time for Christmas. Since 2009, five albums have garnered sixty-three gold and ninety-four platinum sales levels in forty-two countries. Her sixth album, Hope, will be released on October 21 in the United States.

Scottish and United Kingdom audiences thrilled to Miss Boyle’s first full-length concert tours in 2013 and 2014. Now she’s coming to America—home of an immediate and strong support base—starting in San Diego on October 8, and singing her way across the southern half of the United States at venues in twenty cities. A sweep through the northern states could likely follow in the future.

See http://www.susanboylemusic.com/us/events

Many have written about Susan Boyle’s difficult and graced life. Her 2010 autobiography, The Woman I Was Born to Be, is a good source. Now fifty-three, she carefully revealed late in 2013 that, after decades of mistaken assumptions, she had finally been diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome. The relief of self-knowledge strengthens and encourages her after a lifetime of dealing with debilitating anxiety and panic attacks, and some difficulty in handling emotions and relating comfortably to people.

“This is a point: People may have problems,” she states in a documentary, “but they’ve got other things as well. And they’ve got a lot more to offer.” (Gammon, Lottie, produced, filmed, and directed. “There’s Something About Susan.” Firecracker Films Ltd. for ITV, 45:37 minutes. 2013)

Fewer analyses have considered her role as a small businesswoman and philanthropist whose personal success has enhanced the lives and small businesses of countless others not only in her native Scotland but also in, for example, America.

Miss Boyle, easily mistaken for a stately five feet ten in the famous video, is, in fact, barely over five feet tall with soft, dainty hands and feet—a huggable China doll. So she does qualify as a smallbusinesswoman despite her multimillions in sales, which also benefit business giants like Sony Music Entertainment UK Limited; SYCOmusic (Simon Cowell); Simon & Schuster, Inc.; Amazon; and, more recently, concert tour bus companies. In significant other ways, she retains her focus on the little ones.

The woman who had “never been married, never been kissed” and remains a virgin has, since 2009, given birth with astonishing fecundity. Lewis Hyde well describes her kind of gift and fertility in his 1983 classic, The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property: “I have hoped . . . to speak of the inner gift that we accept as the object of our labor, and the outer gift that has become a vehicle of culture. I am not concerned with gifts given in spite or fear, nor those gifts we accept out of servility or obligation; my concern is the gift we long for, the gift that, when it comes, speaks commandingly to the soul and irresistibly moves us.”

Mr. Hyde first explores traditional “gift economies,” in which citizens are considered wealthy not according to how much they acquire but how much they give. In fictional form, Jean M. Auel’s well-researched Earth’s Children series (The Clan of the Cave Bear and five sequels) describes the creativity and ingenuity that led people to survive, to form communities, and to work cooperatively for mutual benefit. Goods, services, storytelling and musical talents, art, and many other gifts were appreciated in deeper ways than they might be in a typical “market economy.”

According to reviewer JoAnn Schwartz, “Above all, Hyde is interested in examining the effect our current immersion in the market economy and the myth of the free market has both on our view of gifts and on our ability to give and receive them. The market economy is deliberately impersonal, but the whole purpose of the ‘gift economy’ is to establish and strengthen the relationships between us, to connect us one to the other. It is this element of relationship which leads Hyde to speak of gift exchange as ‘erotic’ commerce, opposing eros (the principle of attraction, union, involvement which binds together) to logos (reason and logic in general, the principle of differentiation in particular). A market economy is an emanation of logos.

“In a market economy,” Ms. Schwartz continues, “one can hoard one’s goods without losing wealth. Indeed, wealth is increased by hoarding—although we generally call it ‘saving.’ In contrast, in a gift economy, wealth is decreased by hoarding, for it is the circulation of the gift(s) within the community that leads to increase—increase in connections, increase in relationship strength. Through this book, Hyde helps us focus on the importance of gifts, their flow and movement, and the impact that the modern market place has had on the circulation of gifts.” (http://southerncrossreview.org/4/schwartz.html)

Susan Boyle does appreciate the financial security that she had never known, especially in the fearsome years after her mother died in 2007, when Miss Boyle kept her house cold so that she could afford the heating bill. Yet more important, Susan Boyle has said all along, “I sing to make people happy.” When she was a girl, the gift spoke “commandingly to the soul”—her soul. She honed, honed, honed the gift to perfection over decades of world obscurity. She sees with gratitude and humility the effects of this gift on people worldwide. When this gift is pointed out to her in personal conversation, she bows her head and lowers her eyes shyly. “Thank you.”

Miss Boyle’s fame and financial success have boosted tourism modestly in West Lothian, Scotland, with its pastoral more than spectacular scenery, a region that has suffered from bouts of economic depression and unemployment over the past few centuries. In February 2013, for example, following a centuries-old pattern, the main employer in the area—Halls of Broxburn meat processing plant—was closed by foreign owners, leaving 1,700 unemployed.

Lorraine Campbell co-owns and manages The Balbairdie—a nicely refurbished old hotel and pub in Bathgate, West Lothian. When the economy suffers, The Balbairdie feels it. Asked how she copes, Ms. Campbell replied, “You just keep going.” Happily, the local economy has improved some since 2013, according to Ms. Campbell in April 2014.

Miss Boyle has engaged experts like Andy Stephens, manager; Nicola Phillips, publicist; and Andrew Panton, creative and vocal director, to name a few. She has provided jobs for local personal assistants who handle correspondence, scheduling, wardrobe consultation, and myriad other details; gardeners; carpenters to renovate the council house she grew up and still lives in (her first big post-Britain’s Got Talent purchase); a housekeeper; women who fix her hair, do her nails, and apply her makeup for special public appearances and photo sessions; and others who tend to basic needs of a now-busy celebrity who still prefers to live in her home village, stop in at her favorite small shops and establishments, and take the bus.

Miss Boyle has also given seed money and sponsorship for creative business and charitable ventures in her local community and beyond. One start-up, Boyle’s Boutique, is an extended-family cottage industry that sells, among others, products featuring the new Boyle Tartan created for the family. Products may be ordered online.

Susan Boyle’s very capable personal assistant Sadie Boyle (no relation) says Miss Boyle gets about four hundred emails weekly, many requesting her generosity. This kind of response to another’s fame and fortune is not uncommon.

More unusual, and a clearer example of the fruits of the “gift economy,” is the generation of a worldwide community of Susan Boyle supporter-fans who have formed friendships, discovered or rekindled their own creative gifts, invested thousands of volunteer hours, spread financial generosity, and—to a small extent—started creative cottage enterprises for profit or merely to cover expenses.

Several unofficial Susan Boyle fansites live on the Internet. The first and largest, still flourishing, is www.susan-boyle.com. On April 11, 2009, Paul Wood, a London construction worker, watched Miss Boyle’s audition on TV and immediately put up a website. Starting within hours after the audition aired, people from many continents to whom Susan Boyle’s gift spoke “commandingly to the soul” were “irresistibly move[d]” to find out anything they could about her on the Internet. They frequently stumbled across Mr. Wood’s hastily launched site with its prolific discussion threads generating hundreds of written comments every day in the first two months of Miss Boyle’s fame.

To bring some order to the conversational chaos, Mr. Wood launched a companion Forum in June 2009 with more sophisticated software, accessed through the main website. Anyone could (and still can) join for free. The main rules are that one not be an Internet troll (a term and experience many had never heard of), that one behave reasonably civilly as outlined in posted guidelines, and that one not use the Forum itself for commercial purposes (more on that later).

Volunteer moderators and techies keep the discussions and online experience on an even keel. Online advertisements generated by Google AdSense and Amazon sales linked to the website (“SuBo Store”) help pay for the normal operational expenses.

In early 2010, Mr. Wood announced that he was going to auction off the website (some fifty thousand registered members) and its Forum (a few thousand registered members at the time). The worldwide member community could not bear the prospect of being taken over by some unknown commercial entity with other goals. So they decided to bid on the fansite themselves. A few members—by no means wealthy—each voluntarily loaned trusted fellow members a few thousand dollars to buy the fansite during the auction. The effort succeeded in July 2010.

Navigating through some tensions and hurt feelings (typical in any community anywhere), the worldwide Susan Boyle Fans International, Inc. (SBFII) community established itself as a non-profit corporation registered in Delaware, USA. SBFII elects a multinational volunteer board of directors; keeps meticulous financial records and files annual tax returns; maintains bylaws; and holds online annual meetings and elections engaging active members. Technically not a charity, SBFII uses AdSense and SuBo Store income to cover modest expenses and keep a healthy bank balance. Funds left over from voluntary collections (often for tasteful gifts for Miss Boyle for special occasions) are donated to a charity of Susan Boyle’s choice, frequently benefitting children in Scotland. By December 2011, SBFII repaid all interest-free loans given by members to buy the website; it remains debt free. No member gets paid for services to SBFII or personally benefits financially.

From the beginning, even silver-haired grandmothers proficient only with email learned to navigate the fansites in order to participate in a community of people who have experienced an inexplicable response to Susan Boyle—both her singing and her unique way of being—unlike their response to other favorite singers. Within months, members began gathering in person around the globe (often in restaurants, boosting local economies). They attended (and surreptitiously filmed and posted to the fansites for the enjoyment of those who could not attend) Miss Boyle’s performances in various cities (Britain’s Got Talent tour venues in the UK; Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, Tokyo, and more). Supporter-fans flocked to these events even though—until only 2013, when she first tried her own full-length concerts in Scotland—Miss Boyle was slated to sing just one, two, maybe three songs. These gatherings supported local hotels, B+Bs, restaurants, cab drivers, shops, and other travel-related businesses.

Miss Boyle and her team soon experienced that supporter-fans who came to these early events were older or at least more mature than stereotypical rowdies at, for example, Justin Bieber concerts. They saw that typical Susan Boyle supporter-fans are responsible, respectful, fun loving, generative. They include retired or active professionals—teachers, nurses, techies, writers, musicians, artists, farmers, truckers, businesspeople, social workers, radio hosts, professors, lawyers, homemakers, construction workers, postmasters, foresters.

To most gatherings (usually at restaurants) supporter-fans bring homemade memorabilia to share, including commemorative buttons and red scarves to identify themselves in various venues. The popularity of such items led SBFII to add another linked site, “Fan Creations,” linked in turn to the creators’ individual websites. Products include non-Susan-Boyle-related fan creations. Currently, three members offer SuBotique Hand Painted Apparel; Creative Images by tweek (Buttons, Mugs, etc.); and Susan Boyle Professional Singer chronicles gathered from news and other sources.

SBFII members often post creative ideas and images to discuss in writing with one another. Memorably, in 2009, a member from Texas, one from Iowa, and other volunteers, coordinated an international quilting bee. Supporter-fans from every continent, including Antarctica, created and mailed squares for a handmade quilt presented to Miss Boyle at a brunch following her debut solo appearance on the Todayshow on November 23—the day her first album, I Dreamed A Dream, was released in the United States and quickly broke world records in several categories.

Members can upload Susan-related videos that they have created; share poems that they’ve written; upload posters that they’ve designed digitally to document Miss Boyle’s career and accomplishments; upload news reports of supporter-fan activities, complete with photographs; post fine pencil drawings or paintings displaying talent the artists had only recently discovered; and offer a place where members can contribute their own essays. These essays, sometimes written in French or other non-English languages, often try to explain how the wee singer with the big voice; the shy woman who communicates profoundly—cor ad cor loquitur—through music others have written; the multimillionaire who stays in her small lifelong home and still takes the bus—the essentially inexplicable Susan Boyle—“irresistibly moves” them.

SBFII and other volunteers take responsibility to daily and positively post or re-post Susan Boyle news, photos, and encounters on Twitter, Facebook, and other social media. Their Internet involvement began immediately when Miss Boyle became famous—and once again experienced the bullying known since childhood, only this time inflicted by some members of the media and anonymous commentators. She writes in her autobiography, “What I didn’t know then, because I didn’t have a computer at the time, was that every time there was a mean comment about me in the press, a dozen messages of support would appear in response. On the Internet there was a growing community of fans. I had no idea how many people out there in the world felt moved to stick up for me, and I want to thank everybody for that.” (The Woman I Was Born to Be, pages 188–189)

Miss Boyle’s professional team also encourages creativity from fans. Starting with the first documentary of her life, Susan Boyle: I Dreamed A Dream, produced in 2009 by Talkback Thames, fans were invited via the official www.susanboylemusic.com site (picked up and promoted by volunteer sites) to send short videos of themselves saying “Hello, Susan!” with backdrops representing their locations. Several clips from around the world were chosen for the documentary. As a lead-up to Miss Boyle’s second album, The Gift, she held a worldwide “Susan’s Search” competition, inviting any amateur singer to upload a brief selfie singing “Silent Night.” The winner, Amber Stassi, a thirty-three-year-old paramedic from Brewerton, New York, sang “Do You Hear What I Hear?” with Miss Boyle on the album and at the 2010 outdoor Today show appearance in New York City.

In the 2013 and 2014 concert tours in Scotland and the United Kingdom, Miss Boyle and her team selected local choirs to serve as back-up choruses in every city, receiving standard financial compensation. Already individual choir members in the United States are tweeting: “Aaliyah Buchanan ‏@Itsuko_Sora I’m to pumped, i get to sing for Susan Boyle!!!!” and “Drew Mikuska ‏@DrewMikuska Hahahahaha I’m singing backup for Susan Boyle.”

Already in the twenty cities spanning the southern United States, supporter-fans from as far away as Australia and Scotland are buying tickets. They are organizing pre-concert dinner-camaraderie gatherings for supporter-fans, some of whom they have never met in person but know through their written posts on fansites. Restaurants, hotels, theaters, airlines, public transportation providers, cab drivers, and many small businesses will benefit. Susan Boyle, her team, and numerous music-related vendors will profit.

Yet in Susan Boyle’s “gift economy,” which she neither forecasted nor manipulated, money can facilitate but cannot possibly buy the greatest benefits to the community in which she finds herself to be the generator and principal member. In this higher economy, she is both blessed herself and a blessing to countless others.

As recently reported on her official website, Susan says about her upcoming United States concert tour: “This is a brilliant moment for me. The past five years have been incredible, and it just keeps getting better. I have spoken so often about wanting to tour America and be able to visit different cities for the first time—I’m so excited. This really will be fantastic, and I can’t wait for October. The US embraced and supported me from the beginning, and it really feels like a second home. So I can’t wait to get on the road and perform there.”

Source:Small Business Exchange Northeast